e-prime - View Single Post - Argument #9: Improving one's writing isn't an issue of general semantics

primus · 11-12-2006, 03:29 AM

Argument #9:
(by James French - http://learn-gs.org/library/etc/49-2-french.pdf)

Even if E-Prime should improve one's writing, that is not a reason to promote it as a general semantics practice. The class of items that we might call "effective writing techniques," fall outside the subject matter of general semantics, and so any incidental benefits are as irrelevant to general semantics as they would be to any other discipline. Imagine if you will that E-Prime improved the writing of students and professors in the physics department of some university. Would we then consider E-Prime to be an element of physics?

11-12-2006, 03:29 AM	#1 (permalink)
primus Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 10	Argument #9: Improving one's writing isn't an issue of general semantics Argument #9: (by James French - http://learn-gs.org/library/etc/49-2-french.pdf) Even if E-Prime should improve one's writing, that is not a reason to promote it as a general semantics practice. The class of items that we might call "effective writing techniques," fall outside the subject matter of general semantics, and so any incidental benefits are as irrelevant to general semantics as they would be to any other discipline. Imagine if you will that E-Prime improved the writing of students and professors in the physics department of some university. Would we then consider E-Prime to be an element of physics?